John Michael Kohler Arts Center
About John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in downtown Sheboygan includes eight galleries, two performance spaces, a café with additional children's menu, a museum shop with a wide variety of souvenirs and even children's toys, and a drop-in art-making studio. Among its program offerings are community arts projects; artist residencies; presentations of dance, film, and music; a free weekly summer concert series; classes and workshops; an onsite arts-based preschool; and approximately twelve original exhibitions of the work of self-taught and contemporary artists annually.
Even the bathrooms at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center are art installations and they have won national awards! The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is free to visit with free parking and free access to the social art studio.
About the Art Preserve
John Michael Kohler Arts Centers' Art Preserve is an experimental space, housing over thirty-five artist-built environments. A walk through the building provides a variety of display methods; some collections are meant to feel overwhelming while others are intended to be immersive and transportive.
You may wonder, what is an artist-built environment?
This term describes a unique form of art making that significantly transforms a space. These artist-built environments are site-specific and may include sculpture, painting, found objects, among other forms. At the Art Preserve, these artist-built environments are presented together, if possible, to evoke the integral qualities of the original site.
The Art Preserve building itself is a work of art and a must-see when visiting Sheboygan, WI! It spans approximately 56,000 square feet, over three stories, and including more than 37,000 square feet of dedicated gallery space with visible storage, education area, library, a study collection, and archive room. The Art Preserve sits on 38 acres adjacent to protected property owned by Glacial Lakes Conservancy.
Exhibits & Events at John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Independent Lens
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 | 12:00 p.m.
Thursday, May 9, 2024 | 6:30 p.m.
JMKAC Theatre
Free
Between 2011 and 2013, tubas were stolen from high schools across Southern California. Against this backdrop, hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel generates new sensitivity to sound and meaning in an unconventional documentary experience.
Total Run Time: TBD
Independent Lens premiere: Monday, May 20
Indigeneity—a state of being Indigenous and originating from a specific place; encompassing displaced minorities whose ancestral homelands have been lost due to colonialism, yet preserved in the continuity of cultures, identities, and kinship.
HMong Indigeneity lives in textiles: vibrant, breathing pieces of cloth shaped by HMong hands to illustrate ancestral landmarks and homelands. Here, lines converge to form patterns and an aesthetic of kin that replace teb chaws—land, country, and place—as pathways for Indigeneity to reside.
@ City Green + @ The Art Preserve
The JMKAC Levitt AMP Music Series is held Thursdays on the City Green (with the exception of Wednesday, July 3rd) as well as during the Midsummer Festival of the Arts. There will be live music, free art-making, food trucks, and a beverage tent. Free to the public.
John Michael Kohler Arts Center Photos
Contact John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Just 4 minutes from Blue Harbor Resort in Sheboygan, WI.
ARTS CENTER: 608 New York Avenue | Sheboygan, WI 53801
Just 7 minutes from Blue Harbor Resort in Sheboygan, WI.
ART PRESERVE: 3636 Lower Falls Road | Sheboygan, WI 53081
920-458-6144
